


silence and sound

by failsafe



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Light Angst, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2813594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you're waiting on something that might be impossible, life can be a little quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silence and sound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> I hope you like it!!! I tried to kind of take out a little piece of something that might fit into canon that focused on one of your prompts. I really love the West family, too, and I cannot imagine what torture it must be to watch someone you love be in a coma. At least we know this particular thing got better. Happy Yuletide!

Days in the West house are quiet without Barry. The lights are rarely on, and Joe and Iris are almost never home. Even when they are, things are the same. They sit in near darkness, and the air is very still. The house itself is still, and everyone in it is waiting.

Sometimes, Joe wishes for more hours at work. He wishes there were more to do with his hands.

Looking from the dining table and into the living room, he sees his little girl hunched forward with her elbows on her knees. She has her hands clasped around the back of her neck beneath her hair. His chest aches for her, and it aches for Barry. The feelings are both different and the same.

She's awake, and he can see what she's thinking written all over her.

He's asleep, and Joe doesn't know whether he's having nightmares or dreams. He doesn't know if the Barry Allen he knew might already be gone.

He wishes for more hours at work, but he knows he has to be here now. He can't arrest or shoot a lightning strike.

“Iris?” he asks, just to break the dead, still, dark air in the house.

“Yeah?” she asks, and it's a tone they've both learned well. They're trying to sound pleasant because nothing else seems like it is.

“Can you turn on a light?” Joe asks, not mentioning that it's mostly for her.

“Yeah, Dad,” she replies, and she moves to her feet quietly and walks over to flick a switch. When she's finished, she stands aimlessly on a creaky spot of the floorboards. She shifts her weight back and forth and it makes a little sound that seems so foreign that it apparently fascinates her briefly. It scares Joe a little – what they're becoming like this. He knows it's got to change, but they can't _move on_ from losing Barry when he's still there, just a few miles down the road.

“Baby, what do you want for supper?” Joe prompts her after a moment of watching her, testing the floor.

“I don't know, Dad,” Iris says gently, not looking up but taking a few small steps toward him. “Anything. Whatever you want. I can help,” she says, remembering to volunteer as she looks at her hands.

“Iris?” Joe prompts more seriously, and she finally looks up to meet his eyes.

“Yeah, Dad?” she asks, more slowly.

“You know he wouldn't want us to be like this,” Joe asserts, as painful as it is. It sounds like the kind of thing a person is supposed to say once someone is gone.

“I know that, Dad,” Iris says, and this time she looks off to the side, shying away.

“So we can't. We keep going. We keep hoping. But we can't just... wait... forever. We have to live while he's asleep, too.”

“What do you want me to do, Dad?”

“Just... get out of here more, Iris. See your friends. Go somewhere.”

“Dad, what if something happens to him again? I have to be there,” Iris insists, shaking her head and looking at him incredulously.

“I'm not saying you don't keep your phone on, keep one foot at his bedside – I know I do, too – but put the other foot someplace besides this house.”

Iris makes a small sound of affirmation, but he doesn't know if she means it or not. She steps over to the pantry and gets down the biscuit mix and sets a few cans on the counter. He tries not to hope too much, but he has to. They're his kids, and sometimes hope is all he has. It's the first sign of initiative he's seen from her in weeks.

\- - -

Iris's clothes fit a little closer than she's been used to in weeks. She's been getting dressed in a hurry, running around and tending to errands and going to work in the loosest, easiest to change things she can find. Each day has been centered on a visit to Star Labs and the long walk down to where they're keeping Barry. Today is the first day she's had an appointment before she goes to see Barry.

She steps over the threshold of the little sports bar and squirms her ankles in her shoes. They're flat and have pretty practical grips on the soles, but they still fit differently than lace-ups and sneakers. She adjusts her big, floral-printed bag on her shoulder and looks down along the bar. Her brow crinkles just a little. She's surprised, addled at how weird it seems to be around this many people when she doesn't have a job to keep her mind on.

Suddenly, just a few tables deep, she sees a hand reaching up and waving. It looks soft and kind of big, and she wonders how a cop keeps such neatly maintained fingernails.

“Oh,” Iris says, and she hopes she doesn't sound disappointed. She's mostly embarrassed that she didn't see him without help. “Hi, Detective,” she says – casual, then formal. She can't figure out how this is supposed to go. She walks over to the table and has a seat across from him anyway, a little tense.

“Please, you can call me Eddie,” Eddie Thawne says, squirming his shoulders in his fitted suit jacket. She wonders why he wore it to meet her, but she realizes that he might be heading straight back into work right after this. Then she remembers more clearly what she's doing here.

“... Thanks, Detective Thawne,” she says, a little persistent but she feels a little tug – like marionette strings in her cheeks that almost don't belong.

“Alright, if you insist, Ms. West,” Eddie Thawne replies.

Iris meets his eyes and narrowed her own just a little, concentration more than glare.

“Hi, what can I get you guys to drink?” a waitress interjects and draws Iris's focus away and up.

“Whatever he wants,” Iris replied, nodding toward Eddie and letting her gaze fall down to the sealed wood grain on the table. She runs her thumb against it.

Drink orders in hand a few moments later, Iris levels her gaze back at Eddie.

“Thank you,” she says, now that it's time.

Eddie lifts his glass to clink it to hers.

Iris scowls a little – knowing she is, unable to help it – as her lips turn upward a little more all on their own. She's lifting the glass, too, and she hears the sound and looks at the contact of the glasses curiously. Then it's up past them back to Eddie's eyes.

“You're welcome,” Eddie says when she does. “And I mean that. You are welcome. It's the least I can do when your family's going through this.”

“Oh,” Iris says again. Then she shakes her head and closes her eyes. While she's not looking, her lips curve up into a full arc on their own, and she feels them slide back to reveal her teeth. She blinks open her eyes and she's smiling freely. “I mean, that's really nice, and you don't have to, but we really appreciate it. I know my dad does.”

“He's my partner,” Eddie says, less than dismissively. It surprises Iris, and she notices again that he really does have pretty eyes. She blinks fast a few times, trying to refocus.

“Well, I think this is a little bit above and beyond,” she offers, nodding.

“It might be for some people, but I don't mind at all. I'm new to town, and I understand it's tough to do what you need to do when your heart's in two different places.”

“Your heart?” Iris asks, and for a moment she wishes so could retract the question.

“Yeah. You don't think your dad's whole heart has to go into his job?” Eddies asks, light eyebrows lifting just a little.

“No, no,” Iris says, relieved. “No, I know it is.”

“Well, your heart belongs with family when one of them still needs you right there.”

Iris looks down at her phone, checks the time.

“Yeah,” she agrees, then locks the screen again.

“Listen,” Eddie says, and he reaches out and his hand touches over Iris's hand, gently draping itself.

She feels the warmth and almost flinches. She pulls it back just a little as she levels her eyes with his. She regrets it for a second when he lifts his hand back up so she can clearly see his palm. She knows he didn't meant any harm.

“Listen,” he repeats easily, not offended. “If you need to go see him, I understand. And I appreciate the gesture,” he says, sloshing the contents of his glass gently.

“I've got it,” Iris promises him, and she's fishing in her bag for her wallet. She gets it out and signs the credit receipt as soon as it comes, but she stays firmly planted in the seat. For now. “Thank you... _so much_... Eddie,” she says, pausing for a second and smiling just a little again.

“Not Detective?” he teases, and she catches it almost like she was expecting it.

“Thank you, Detective Thawne,” she says with a little, formal nod.

She's smiling when she gets up to leave.

“I'll... see you again soon,” she says, and she doesn't know why but she knows she's telling the truth.

\- - -

In Star Labs, the monitors beep and hum and tubes hiss. The silence is a lot less empty than it is at home. Iris takes her seat and Barry's bedside, and at first her hands are clasped tightly together. She's leaning her elbows against her knees.

“Hi, Barry,” she says, forced bright tone. The smile fits her face just a little better than it has in days past.

She waits. And there's nothing, but she doesn't expect there to be. She wonders how long she could do this. Months? Years? She knows it'd be a long, long time before she could ever stop. And she won't. She never will. She promises herself.

“So, I... I'm sorry I'm late,” she says.

Again, there's nothing, and she hears the man and woman the work in the lab milling about, whispering, somewhere behind. She doesn't ask or try to listen. Instead, she slides just a little closer to the edge of the bed, still in the seat.

“I just... went out for a little while today. And it was nice. He was... nice,” she tells him, but the words start to die away as she speaks them. Words aren't coming as easily today, and she wonders if it's because she wasted them on someone who could definitely hear them. It worries her, but she rubs the bridge of her nose and pushes past it.

Suddenly, she turns at the waist and looks back and forth between the man and woman who work in the lab.

“Can I touch him?” she asks. “Is it safe?”

“Don't see why not,” the young man – Cisco – answers her around a small lollipop as he shifts the position of a table just a little with a loud screech along the floor.

Caitlin looks up and pushes her hair back. She meets Iris's eyes, and Iris thinks she seems sympathy there, but then there's a furrow in her brow, and Iris thinks she's about to be told no. She pretends she didn't see, because right now she doesn't think she wants to know. She feels tired – more peacefully tired than she's been in months – and she needs to feel Barry warm and alive and breathing.

“Well, his obvious injuries have healed – a long time ago, they healed,” Caitlin provides quickly, trying to speak faster as Iris turns back toward the bed. “But he's still in a coma, so—”

But Caitlin gives up with an audible sigh as Iris pushes herself so close that her knees work their way in just beneath part of the hospital bed tangled with sensors and wires. Many of them are attached to Barry's temple and fingertips and over his heart. She tries to leave them alone. The area just over his ribcage seems clean, clear. She leans her head down, inch by inch, and settles in to letting her hear rest against his body, their her cheek. She's listening to him breathe, his pulse.

Her hand slowly slakes up to beneath where she think she might interfere with the sensor and feels his heartbeat drumming – really fast, and she wonders if he can hear. She wonders if she wants him to.

“I talked to Detective Pretty-boy today. He seems really nice,” she says as she closes her eyes and stays very still, just listening to the gentle, soft noise for a while.


End file.
